Page 58 of Rock Paper Scissors
“Who are the people in these pictures, do you recognize any of their faces?” I ask.
I can tell that the portraits at the bottom of the stairs are of people dressed in Victorian clothes. The ones nearer the top look more recent. I can see that some of the subjects are adults, others are children, but—as usual—I can’t see any of their faces.
Amelia shakes her head, so I start to pull her up the stairs.
“How about now? Anyone here look familiar?”
“You’re scaring me, Adam,” she says, and I can hear from her breathing that she’s telling the truth. I’m about to apologize when she speaks again.
“Hang on, I think this photo is of Henry as a teenager… and the one below looks a bit like him too, but younger, with a man and woman. Parents, perhaps.”
“Some kind of family tree maybe? Keep going,” I say, not letting her go.
“I’m fairly sure most of these picturesareof Henry. I didn’t notice until now, but then I didn’t know what to look for. He’s a lot younger than the face I see on book jackets and in the newspapers—all of which are so out of date.”
Now I drop her hand.
I stare at the photos myself, trying to see what she sees, but it’s pointless.
“Anyone else look familiar?” I ask, when Amelia stops abruptly at the top of the stairs. I notice her twisting the sapphire engagement ring round and round her finger.
“There are some pictures of a little girl too… hold on.”
“What?”
“These pictures weren’t here before. Do you remember? There were just three faded rectangular shapes with rusty nails sticking out of the wall. Someone has put them back.” I’m about to ask if it was her, but bite my tongue. “I think this picture is of—”
I spot something over her shoulder before she finishes her sentence.
“One of the other doors is open,” I interrupt, rushing toward it.
All of the doors on the landing were locked last night, except for the one leading to the bedroom that we slept in, and the one to the bell tower. But now another door is wide open, and I find myself standing inside a child’s bedroom.
Everything is covered in dust like the rest of the chapel, but this room is also full of cobwebs. It smells musty, like it hasn’t been aired for months. Maybe longer. The creepiest thing to catch my eye is the large doll’s house in the middle of the room. It looks antique. It also looks remarkably like our London home—a double-fronted Victorian house. I’m unable to stop myself from opening the dusty doors, and when I see that the rooms inside are decorated in a similar way to our house, I start to feel sick. The same two carved wooden dolls are in every room, but they are not miniature replicas of Amelia and me. One is a doll-sized old man, wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie, the other is a little girl doll, dressed inred. In every make-believe scene they are holding hands, and the old man is always smoking a pipe. When I take a closer look, I see that the pipes are really acorn cups and stalks.
“Have you seen this?” Amelia asks.
She is holding an old jack-in-the-box. I had one exactly like it myself as a child, and it terrified me. I don’t understand the significance at first, until I see that the name Jack has been crossed out, so that now it says Adam-in-the-box instead.
My mother taught me the French name for these things when I was a little boy:diable en boîte,literally “boxed devil.” So many unexpected things remind me of her. And whenever they do, I relive the night she died: the rain, the terrible sound of screeching car brakes, her red kimono flying in the air. The dog was mine. I begged her to let me have one, but then I didn’t look after it. If thirteen-year-old me had walked the dog myself, like I promised to, she wouldn’t have been killed walking along the pavement that night.
My fingers, seemingly independent of my mind, find the crank on theAdam-in-the-box and turn it. Slowly. The nostalgic tune plays and my mother’s voice sings along inside my head.
My mother taught me how to sew,
And how to thread the needle,
Every time my finger slips,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Jack bursts out of the box and I jump, even though I knew what was coming. With its wild red hair, painted face, and spotty blue outfit, it looks terrifying, even more so than the one I remember as a child, because its eyes are missing.
I think I understand the not-so-subtle message, but what else am Inotseeing?
As I turn to take in the rest of the bedroom, I notice that the wallpaper, curtains, pillows, and duvet are all covered in faded images of the same thing: robins. Then I see the dusty, freestanding,child’s blackboard in the corner of the room. The chalk words on it have faded, and were clearly written years ago, but I can still make them out:
I must not tell tales.
